BIPOC Critics Lab Expands to Bicoastal Program With Old Globe and Public Theater

The 2025-26 BIPOC Critics Lab cohort. (Photo courtesy of the Public Theater)

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May 13, 2026 American Theatre Editors Leave a comment

BIPOC Critics Lab Goes Bicoastal With Old Globe, Public Theater

Applications are now open for the first bicoastal 2026-27 BIPOC Critics Lab cohort, as the 2025-26 cohort completes their training.

By American Theatre Editors

NEW YORK CITY and SAN DIEGO, CALIF.: The Public Theater and the Old Globe have announced today that they will be co-hosting the first joint bicoastal cohort of cultural critic Jose Solís’ BIPOC Critics Lab during the 2026-27 season. The program has been housed at the Public for three years, continuing Solís’s commitment to creating an educational space for BIPOC writers to jumpstart their careers in cultural criticism and arts journalism. Applications are open for the next cohort, due Wednesday, June 24.

“When I created the BIPOC Critics Lab in 2020, I wanted to build the kind of room many of us had been left out of, a space where critics of color could be met with care and real opportunity,” program founder Jose Solís said in a statement. “To see that room become a movement and now grow into a bi-coastal partnership between the Public Theater and the Old Globe, fills me with enormous pride and awe. At a moment when the value of diversity is being questioned in so many cultural spaces, this expansion affirms something I have always believed: American theatre is richer, sharper, and more alive when more of us get to help shape how it is seen and remembered.”

Applicants who reside within a commutable distance to each theatre will be eligible for consideration. Sessions for the Lab will span the course of the Public and the Old Globe’s 2026-27 season, with the primary instruction to take place on Zoom during the fall and in-person opportunities at both theatres throughout the spring. Those chosen to participate will receive offers to join the cohort in August, with the cohort kicking off in early September.

Said Old Globe artistic director Barry Edelstein in a statement, “We value the vital role drama critics and arts journalists play in shaping how the theatre community’s work is seen and understood—through features, reviews, and thoughtful coverage  that interprets and amplifies the work on our stages. Together with The Public, we will support, develop, and invest in the next generation of BIPOC arts journalists and theatre critics, and help to ensure that they have meaningful opportunities, strong networks, and the platforms necessary to share their work with the world. Their voices contribute to a broader cultural conversation that reinforces the Globe’s mission to make theatre matter beyond our stage, both in Southern California and across the nation.”

The Public also announced its 12 members who have successfully completed their training for the BIPOC Critics Lab over the past year: Anna Aguiar Kosicki, Serena Arora, Artel Great, Branden Janese, Timiki Salinas, Ankita Sharma, Julia Wojciechowska, Isaac Woon, Yashmita, Melvin Ningyao Yen, Hope Yoon, and Rohan Zhou-Lee. In addition to their writing, these cohort members bring expertise in film, acting, music, visual arts curation, politics, storytelling, movement and dance, costume and set production, accessibility, photography, video games, and arts organizing. To add these individuals to your press lists, email BIPOCCriticsLab@publictheater.org to receive their contact information.

“This past cohort reminded me how expansive the future of criticism already is,” Solís said in a statement. “Our Lab members joined us from South Korea, Taiwan, Poland, Latin America, and Black diasporic backgrounds, bringing with them practices shaped by dance, cinema, theatre, poetry, and other artistic forms. I was moved by the way their artistic languages and lived experiences entered into conversation with one another. Together they expanded what criticism can sound like and what it can make possible.”

The BIPOC Critics Lab was founded in 2020 by Jose Solís as a first-of-its-kind program designed to train and create work by emerging BIPOC theatre journalists. Alumni have gone on to hold freelance posts and editorial positions at notable outlets including The New York Times , The Los Angeles Times , TDF Stages, American Theatre, 3Views, The Hat, Brooklyn Rail , and Elle .

Meet the 2025-26 cohort:

Anna Aguiar Kosicki lives and works in Chicago. They write and edit essays, stage manage plays, fight for abortion access, and have too many hobbies. They are also a researcher and fact checker. Their critical work has appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books , Protean Magazine , Momus , and The New Inquiry , where they also served as an editor.

Serena Arora is a New York-based actor, playwright, and writer dedicated to spotlighting under-represented voices. A Boston University graduate, she recently completed training at the Atlantic Acting Conservatory. Her one-woman show, House of Vanvas , is in development for an upcoming workshop. She will soon publish her first theatre criticism piece with 3Views . Her creative range is also showcased in her poetry novel, The Beast Within , and debut EP, Painted Blind .

Artel Great is an Independent Spirit Award-nominated filmmaker, writer, and cultural critic whose work explores the politics, poetics, and possibilities of Black film and visual culture. He holds the George and Judy Marcus Endowed Chair in African American Cinema Studies at San Francisco State University, and has written on Black film and culture across national media. He is the author of The Black Pack: Comedy, Race, and Resistance (Rutgers University Press), which has garnered critical and commercial acclaim.

Branden Janese is a writer, facilitator, and curator based in New York City. Janese’s writing has been awarded grants, residencies, and fellowships from NYSCA, NYFA, NYC Mayor’s Office, and more. She’s been published in The Wall Street Journal, Complex, Interview, Flaunt, LADYGUNN, and elsewhere. Her podcast Sick Empire (’21) reached #46 on Apple’s Top 100. She curates and hosts literary social events under the name Public Pages .

Timiki Salinas is a theatre and film artist deeply interested in physical storytelling. He is a company member of the American Mime Theatre and a co-founder of the Bellwether Project , an anti-hierarchical arts collective that creates work using the principles of radical nuance and radical joy. Education: Carnegie Mellon University.

Ankita Sharma is an experimental choreographer and writer invested in storytelling where content dictates genre and betrays expectation, dedicated to unpacking systems of power from a queer, punk lens that rehearses freedom in body and mind. They are a writer and editor at thINKing DANCE and have published essays, academic writing, reviews, and more. They are also an administrator for notable arts organizations and regularly present their performance work (inter)nationally.

Julia Wojciechowska is a Polish-born-and-raised theatre practitioner with a background in set and costume production and international stage work. She holds an MA in performance studies from NYU Tisch School of the Arts and is a doctoral candidate at CUNY’s Theatre and Performance program . Her research lies at the intersection of performance, labor, and material culture, with particular attention to the politics of visibility, the poetics of craft, and how embodied labor informs performative environments and backstage economies.

Isaac Woon is a multidisciplinary artist exploring humorous nightmares of modernity. His debut play Pointless was a winner of the 2024 New South Young Playwrights Festival in Atlanta, and his visual work has been exhibited at Brooklyn venues including Godspeed Studios . He currently works as an assistant general manager of the Finborough Theatre in London.

Yashmita is a visual artist and writer whose criticism explores cinema and visual culture through the lens of South Asian and diasporic experiences. Dedicated to uplifting underrepresented voices, her practice centers on queer life, belonging, and community-building.

Melvin Ningyao is a New York-based Taiwanese cultural critic, playwright, and theatremaker whose broad practice spans theatremaking, photography, and interdisciplinary writing. They have held fellowships at Lincoln Center , Manhattan Theatre Club , and Playwrights Horizons . Their criticism, poetry, and essays appear on HowlRound and their Substack, The Ritual of Seeing .

Hope Yoon is a writer and translator from Seoul working across fiction, theatre, and video games. She is a winner of fiction prizes at Columbia Journal and Driftwood Press, and has a novel translation forthcoming with New Directions in 2027. She is an alum of Soho Rep’s Writer/Director Lab . Yoon works as a facilitator at the Strother School of Radical Attention and as a video game writer at LINE Games . BA: Comparative Literature, Stanford University.

Rohan Zhou-Lee is an international writer, dancer, and arts organizer. In 2023, they became the first Black Asian Open City Fellow at the Asian American Writers’ Workshop . Bylines include Newsweek, Hyperallergic , and more. They have spoken at Harvard University, New York University, the University of Tokyo, and more. Performances include Sandra | Song at the 2025 Enough Festival in Zürich, Switzerland; Over Here! (Off-Broadway debut); and trumpet, Soundcake Orchestra at Lincoln Center. Gender: Firebird. www.diaryofafirebird.com

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Arts journalism Barry Edelstein BIPOC Critics Lab cultural criticism Jose Solís Old Globe Public Theater Showcase

_Originally reported by [American Theatre](https://www.americantheatre.org/2026/05/13/bipoc-critics-lab-goes-bicoastal-with-old-globe-public-theater/)._